to pull our earth back round again
by ember53608
Summary: this mess that they're in right now is a fight for their lives; a figurative one, but real, nonetheless. [crock fam; post-canon.]


It's been quite a while since I posted anything substantive and totally new—my last few fics have mostly just been edited reposts from Tumblr—but I'm proud to announce I'm back, and with this ! As part of a mini bang event on Tumblr, I decided to write an extended character study of the Crock family directly following the events of Invasion. The format and manner of events is sort of inspired by _The Joy Luck Club_ by Amy Tan, but mostly it's just me trying to expel as much pain from my cruel mind as possible before any new canon can contradict me otherwise.

Please, please, please, read and review ! I hate to beg, but working to perfect this has been a struggle—my lovely and unparalleled beta reader **coerulus** can attest to this, I love you so much, Amy—and knowing that people genuinely enjoy it would mean the world to me, even if that enjoyment is in the form of a little comment (albeit long ones are even nicer and encourage me to write more) !

So, without further ado, here you go !

* * *

It's a Thursday afternoon, and the sun beats its rays from overhead onto her small square of uncovered space on the front porch. An oversized suitcase stands on her right side while Brucely—panting, the poor guy—sits on her left, and with her back turned to a door she isn't sure she'll ever open again, Artemis dares to wonder if this can be called the end of "stable".

The path of her orbit has consistently run cross country and back for the past three years. Artemis has always had the space and time of day to set ties where they matter, and the rough patches aside, having Wally at her side has always given her time to breathe.

So to have Palo Alto suddenly robbed of its only, and alternatively, _greatest_ , relevance is nothing if not suffocating. In the space of a few hours on an exhausting and subsequently heartbreaking Monday, Artemis finds herself once again sequestered to a neat little triangle in the country's east side—

—and all without the company of that greatest relevance to survive the small space with her.

"Hey there," she murmurs, leaning down to just above Brucely's height. The slope of his back is equal parts coarse and soft, but her hands grow used to the texture as she runs them over and back again. A rare whimper escapes him as he suffers under the force of the California heat.

It would be an exaggeration to say he's all she has left, but Artemis can count on just one finger how much unquestionable support she has. He's a pitbull who loves to sleep and he doesn't have much to say, but when he wants something, it's never more than soothing hands and eskimo kisses. For now, she can deal with that.

She ruffles his head once before standing back up to check the lock on the door for the fourth time and pocketing the key. Her fingers close hesitantly around the plastic handle of her black suitcase, and she looks out towards the blazing gold of sunlight shining off the windows of the Palo Alto skyline. The taxi waiting for her down at the curb will take her fifteen minutes east into the heart of the college town, and from there she'll zeta to Gotham, into that red and rusted telephone booth of recent memory.

It takes a little encouragement, but a pair of dog treats coaxes Brucely into the kennel she has set aside. She catches the cabbie's attention with a few waves and shouts, and he takes the suitcase from her while she gathers the kennel up in her arms and descends the stairs. Her feet touch the ground, and with hands fisted at her sides, Artemis resists the urge to look back, steeling herself for the summer that lies ahead instead.

Figuratively and literally, she's got a long way to go.

[...]

Forty-three minutes later, her feet are glued to another porch step.

The bare bones of what used to be (and still should be) "home" loom before her in some semblance of childhood grandeur—there's new paint on the walls, and the wind chime hanging just to the right of the door sways in the breeze while the azaleas hanging to the left bloom in pink and red earnest.

Brucely scuffs his paws in anticipation against the welcome mat, and Artemis brings her closed hand to hover in front of the door but doesn't knock.

It's been more than three months since she uttered a word to her mother, and yet, here she is, expecting sanctuary in her hour of greatest need where Paula had none for the days and months and years that came before.

[Wally runs the tips of his fingers through her hair, presses his thumb to the curve of her cheek before kissing a tear away.

"I won't let her be alone," he murmurs, soft but resolute.

Artemis shuts her eyes, unable to silence the anguish that resonates in her heart. His words are a comfort but they hurt like a bitch, because it's him who's willing to stay and pick up the pieces, while she silently counts the hours until it's time for her to leave.]

"Fuck," she whispers.

Her fingers wrap around the suitcase handle and she turns on her heel, but not before Brucely barks a whopping three times (an unusual amount for such a sleepy and good tempered dog), loudly enough for anyone in immediate vicinity to hear. Barely five seconds go by, and the sound of voices surfaces from inside, tying her down to the edge of the first porch step, because here she was in the middle of realizing she couldn't even face one person, and now she has to face _more._

"I got it," says a muffled voice, and she recognizes it instantly—the gruff undertone of her brother-in-law, once marked by unbridled confidence but more recently mired in obsession-driven exhaustion.

Artemis remembers being surprised to see him that day. The ratty facial hair had disappeared, and the mask over his eyes was a clean black and white as opposed to dirtied gray. He had met her eyes for a second and she'd tried for a smile, but somewhere in between one of them gave up before the moment began, and the radio silence had persisted until today.

After all, official paper ties to her family aside, Roy isn't someone she wanted to know in the past two years. Jade can brag all she wants about being the one to walk, but it was Roy who gave up on the whole thing in the first place and never dared to try afterwards, not even when five of the people who meant most to him gathered round on a rooftop to try and talk him back to life.

It's still a surprise, though, to see the transformation he's recently gone through laid bare before her. Artemis feels her lips part as her gaze falls on diamond blue eyes, then the clean-shaven face and freshly cut red hair surrounding them.

["He's lost, babe. Alone."]

Roy touches a hand to his neck and falters, Adam's apple bobbing as he nervously swallows. He's clearly as stunned to see her here as she is him, if the quiet and pained "hey" he murmurs next is any indication. Artemis opens her mouth to say something but falters, too, the emotion of it all collecting on her tongue.

It's been at least two weeks since that moment in Metropolis, but the standstill they've come to in the span of a few seconds is a clear indication that they aren't going anywhere with improving their radio silence.

Another bark from Brucely briefly snaps the building tension, and as Artemis bends down to let him out of his kennel, more voices from inside migrate towards the front door.

Artemis blinks as Jade parades into view and throws a hand over her husband's shoulder. There's a killer smile slung across the assassin's lips, and the brown of her eyes, dark and domineering, brings her little sister's gaze into submission until it's aimed at the doormat.

"Back from your vacation, I see," Jade observes. Her perky facade and harsh words tear recklessly into their target, and although there's an eye-catching list of things under her skillset, Artemis is wont to wonder if many know that her sister's best skill is holding a grudge. The letters etched into the doormat begin to blur under her steadily held gaze, but something about looking into Jade's eyes again keeps her own firmly rooted.

"Jade," Roy says tiredly. The smile on his wife's lips widens in response, and as Artemis watches a brief mental exchange transpire between the two, she feels the beginnings of an argument start to simmer.

The pair's obnoxiously fiery banter is only prevented when the last of the Crock women finally wheels into view, and all expectedly falls quiet. Artemis notes with amusement that even Jade recedes a little upon her mother's arrival, but the feeling the small victory brings her doesn't last very long.

Anyone with eyes can see that Paula Crock's face is a mosaic of the trauma she's sustained over the years. The ex-assassin is barely fifty years old, but the wrinkles in her skin are so deep set that it's hard to see anything else. As the fingers of one bony hand reach up to cup her daughter's cheek, Artemis shuts her eyes and wonders how Wally came back week after week without uttering a _word_ —

—because holding back the truth from someone so learned in its ways already is painful, she imagines. Artemis knows that the moment she looks her mother in the eye, she'll want to tell her everything, because it's always been like this. For as long as she can remember, it's only felt right to tell _her_ , the two of them propped up on the couch while tea steeps in the kitchen.

Or it used to feel that way, really. Artemis can't remember the last time she told her mother the truth.

A curt sound from Jade breaks her out of the moment, and her sister subsequently mutters something about Lian playing with her _sai_ before leaving just as quickly as she came. Artemis turns away from her mother and stares on in awkward silence as Roy clears his throat, making a familiar attempt to look her in the eye before ultimately failing and disappearing inside, too.

Paula, not quite finished with her greeting, lingers for a moment to survey her daughter in full. And, albeit aware she won't be getting a smile today or anytime soon, Artemis is surprised by the pang of guilt that the look on her mother's face sends her. Mutual understanding and disappointment, when worn in the same moment, are more painful to endure than anything else in the world.

"I'm home," she mutters weakly, smile faltering on her lips. Brucely wriggles into view from between her legs and nuzzles Artemis affectionately, reminding her why she brought him along in the first place. As the pitbull whimpers a little, she bends down and pulls him up into her arms, smile cresting a little higher as he reaches up to lick her face.

"We're home," she reiterates, not failing this time to meet Paula's gaze. Brucely whimpers again as she repositions him in the curve of her left arm, then uses her right arm to reach for her suitcase and wrap her fingers around the handle.

 _We're home._ It rings in her ears like a promise, a _real_ one, and as Paula wheels aside to let Artemis pass over the threshold, another thought, a thousand times more vicious than the first, tears through her conscience and nearly stops her in her tracks—

 _We're home,_ she remembers, and her gaze drifts to a picture that sits on the foyer table.

[His arm is wrapped around the small of her back, and she's laughing, because the raspberry he's pressing obnoxiously to her cheek is sending thrills up her spine, and she doesn't know how she ended up so lucky as to have a boy like this hold her heart, but he's here and he's real and the way the world feels when he's holding her in his arms is nothing short of magnificent.]

Paula wheels up from behind and touches her arm, snapping her out of the memory. The picture is three years old, from when they first started college together, but the heart of it resonates strongly within her. Artemis gives it one last look before squaring her jaw, and then she moves on, taking her things and the truth all along with her.

 _We're home,_ her voice echoes.

 _Not all of us,_ she doesn't say back.

* * *

Roy has every intention of making things right; from the minute he sees her in the doorway, he knows that feeling—the gut instinct of wanting to define a family and then keep it together burns fiercely within him, because the last one he had didn't last after he left it.

Ollie and Dinah are together after all these years, but they grieve every day. For the love that they lost, and for the boy who went with it.

And he's trying, to fix it. Every Friday, he drives to Star City with a new Vietnamese dish—Paula has been teaching him—cradled in his hands, and he and Ollie and Dinah, they have a good time. The words between them are rough sometimes, especially on Dinah's end because she still thinks he may pitfall all over again, but he tries for them as best as he can. Sometimes, when Ollie can manage it, the other Roy joins them too.

"Hey, _catch._ "

Roy registers Jade's voice a second too late, and Lian's favorite teddy bear rams into his face before he can catch it. He picks the beloved object off of his chest once it falls and sneaks a wary glance at his wife across the room. The look of concentration on her face is complemented by the way her hands move in a blur, tidying up anything within her reach in hopes of it being a distraction from the current situation.

 _Claws out today,_ he muses, although the reality of their lives means that every day is a "claws out" kind of day, really. Jade catches him staring out of the corner of her eye and raises an eyebrow in question, but he looks away easily before a pointless argument can start.

Admittedly, where their daughter is concerned, they work well together. Jade does the heavy lifting for the most part, but Roy is trying to learn what he can and is secretly proud of the fact that Lian drifts towards him before it's time for her to sleep, afternoon, night, or otherwise.

And she keeps him good company, too, at least where her mother won't. The three of them are staying in the Crock sisters' old room, and Jade has taken to sleeping in her old bed while he stays in Artemis's with Lian often at his side.

As Roy's thoughts drift back to his wife's little sister, he wonders if it would be too much to ask the former to cut the latter some slack. The fact that Artemis felt as if she was obligated to look down at all because of her sister's indignance doesn't sit particularly well with him. His time with Jade, however, has given him the ability to predict her responses, and he can imagine her rebuttal to his comment already.

She'll start with how cutting her parents some slack ended up with one of them landing in jail and eventually a wheelchair, how continuing to cut the other one some slack served her with a permanent job as the bad guy, and how, most glaringly of all, cutting _him_ some slack dropped her into the two loneliest years of her life, though she would never admit it out loud.

Conversations with Jade are never equal parts give, equal parts take. His wife pushes back with more ferocity than is necessary, but then again, considering the circumstances, Roy wonders if he's allowed to say that at all.

He's wonders if it's wishful thinking: hoping to make some sort of ground on the diplomacy front while they stay with her mother for the summer—the idea had been his, a hesitant one at first but more resolute in its making. The tattered state of his apartment was something he didn't want Lian growing up in anyway, and there's a certain sort of comfort to be found in vicinity of Paula Crock and her persevering kindness.

It's only a miracle that Jade agreed to the whole thing, although he can come up with a few reasons as to why she'd finally relent to seeking help here, where it is and always has been.

"Take a picture," Jade suddenly suggests, the cutting edge of her voice instantly sending alarm bells off in his head. She smiles sweetly at him, but the tilt of her lips is too cold and too sharp to be considered anything besides a smirk. "It'll last longer."

As the tips of his ears flush a startled pink, Roy laments not exiting the room earlier when she threw the teddy bear at him. It's been a few hours since Artemis arrived, but Jade is clearly charged and ready to go, the tension wrapping around her frame like a wire pulled taut and ready to snap.

He frowns at her in distaste and lets out a sigh, as is protocol for whenever he feels an argument brewing between them. Fighting with Jade is first on a list of things to avoid at all costs, and Roy intends to follow any reasonable advice that comes his way now that he has the mind to. When he looks in her direction again, she narrows her eyes pointedly as if asking him to go on and dig his own grave, so he offers another sigh before promptly exiting the room and the scope of her daggered gaze.

As far as he knows, Artemis is still milling about in the basement putting her makeshift room—what with him, Jade, and Lian having taken her old one—together, while Paula spends her time in the kitchen trying to keep Lian from playing with the knives. The small, chubby redhead, while enamored with his array of trick arrows, loves her mother's knives and _sai_ more than anything else and often gravitates towards the kitchen knives as playtime substitutes.

[Jade smiles devilishly behind her mask. "It's genetic."]

The squeal that escapes his daughter once he enters her orbit is nothing short of liberating. The tension from a few minutes ago melts off of his shoulders as she stretches out her arms and clamors to be held, and Roy allows himself a small smile as he nods in greeting to Paula before picking Lian up from the counter.

"Da," says the toddler, loudly and with such force that he pulls back a bit, although adoring laughter at his daughter's antics soon follows. Paula's face lifts in one of those rare moments he's come to appreciate, and looking to her, he asks, "She didn't give you too much trouble?"

There's a familiar twinkle in her eyes as she answers him. "You still have to ask?"

Roy's cheeks color again, lighter than before, admittedly, but the embarrassment is still there and easy to notice. The Crock women are outwardly unrelenting in their self confidence and honesty, and it lands him in sticky situations every now and then, but only at the expense of what little over-imposing ego he has left. He smiles to himself at his mother-in-law's comment, knowing that she means well and deciding to roll with it.

"As long as we're living here, I'll ask you that," he replies, and he means well, too, but the second the words leave him he realizes what he's unconsciously admitted to: that they won't be staying here forever. Lian's pudgy fingers land on his face, but he catches the shift in Paula's demeanor out of the corner of his eye, and he hates himself for it.

If only from years of practice, Paula easily breezes over the uncomfortable moment. Her usual facial expression falls over her like a cleverly crafted mask, and her gaze reverts to Lian, who paws excitedly at her father's faint side burns.

"Any ideas for dinner?" she asks, solidifying the notion that she never heard what he said, or didn't care to hear it, anyway.

"Your _xíu mai_ was always nice," Artemis cuts in, and she saunters into the kitchen with visibly more resolve than before. Roy makes it a point to meet her eyes this time, but perhaps his stare is too intense, because it's her who looks away first. Artemis hesitates around Paula, too, but it's Lian who thankfully breaks the thick and gathering silence.

"Ah-wah-mis," she says, face coated in a mixture of wonder and realization. It's been several months since her aunt babysat, but Lian, as Roy has recently learned, is particularly good at committing people's faces to memory.

He hands her off to Artemis willingly, noticing that the latter is still intent on keeping her gaze centered elsewhere. The clock on the oven reads eleven fifty four, which means that in the four hours and twenty four minutes that he's been up, he's managed somehow to alienate every woman under the roof save his own daughter, who can't be cared to hold grudges on matters not concerning her playtime anyway.

The sound of Artemis pressing a genuine kiss to Lian's cheek takes his mind off of it, though, and Roy watches in amusement as the pair melts in each other's presence. " _Xíu mai_ sounds good," he says to Paula, and she nods, mood lifted.

Although he's put in his best efforts to learn all there is about Vietnamese cuisine—Jade refuses to spend more than twenty minutes at a time in the kitchen, so it seems that the responsibility falls on him—he and Paula have a framework they tend to follow when they're cooking so as to avoid imminent disaster.

Roy is (not surprisingly) an expert with pork, but he conjures up terrible results where chicken and beef are concerned, and he hasn't dared to touch duck. According to Paula, he has a talent for soups and the sauce in curries, and once, Jade almost had the mind to compliment him on his _nuoc cham_ before she realized what she was doing and sealed her lips shut.

Almost chuckling at the memory, he opens the fridge and doles out the necessary vegetables while Paula sets to defrosting the meat. Artemis has Lian nestled in the crook of her arm now, as if the girl is five months old as opposed to seventeen. Roy wonders how often she babysat for her sister, considering he was out of the picture for at least a year, maybe more.

He realizes, too, that Wally never mentioned it if he babysat, though he probably did. The fact that Roy was ever in a place where he couldn't be told he had a daughter stabs at him, and he shakes the thought off before the overwhelming guilt of it can take hold again.

A squeal spills from Lian's mouth, too, and Artemis looks at her niece in confusion as she outstretches her arms towards the fridge. Roy suspects Lian might want to show Artemis her latest creation: a drawing of an oblong and incredibly crooked circle in orange crayon.

But as Artemis steers the two of them towards the fridge, he notices that there's something off about his daughter's aim, how she's not pointing to the top right corner of the fridge at all but rather to a cluster of photographs held by magnets onto the middle left.

It's mostly family portraits, of Paula and both of her daughters at one point, but these older photos have been blocked out by the more recent portraits of just Artemis and her mother, as well as an outlier than Roy now realizes his daughter has been trying to reach for the whole time.

Perhaps the worst thing about Wally being gone is constantly coming upon the memory of him and knowing that this version, the momentarily captured one, can hardly compare to the real thing. Roy watches the way Artemis's breath hitches as the realization hits her too, and he can't help but look away, as if the grief that's about to crash into her all over again is something private and not meant for him to see laid bare.

Lian plants her palms on the photograph in question, one of Wally with his right arm wrapped around Artemis and Paula—whose cheek he happens to be pressing a raspberry into, sending her and her daughter both into laughter—while he reaches farther away with his left arm to capture a picture of them altogether. Lian's fingers smudge over the whole trio's faces for a moment before she singles out just one, and then she turns to Artemis and says the worst thing possible, sending the room into a deadly silence.

"Wall-ee," she murmurs softly, the gears in her brain turning quickly. Roy spares his daughter a helpless look, unsure of how to proceed without overstepping his bounds. Paula, he notes, remains seated in her corner, silently observing the scene as it unfolds, though her brow is furrowed in what he can only call worry.

Lian utters the endearing name again, "Wall-ee," and he sees the shift in Artemis's whole body, sees the way her limbs tremble as she struggles to rein in every seeping emotion. As if on cue, Brucely plods into the kitchen and sidles up to his owner, lazily nuzzling her ankle.

Artemis hardly even notices that he's there.

* * *

On normal days, Jade can count the number of annoyances within a five mile radius on one hand.

Today, she has to count them on both and then some, not to mention that these annoyances cover less than a half-mile radius's trajectory, which is honestly just nauseating.

Only seventeen minutes have passed since she terrorized Roy into leaving the room, and a small part of her feels bad, though only for a split second. Not many people realize that the things she has to be angry for are hardly her fault in the first place, and she has every right to simmer or self implode in her own modicum of space.

Maybe that's why he did leave, eventually. Because he understands that better than anyone.

Jade shuts her eyes and touches her fingers to her temple, then takes in a quick breath before releasing it in a weighted wave. There's nothing left for her to do in this room, every last speck of dust caught under a dusting cloth or, sometimes, her thumb. The sheets on each bed have been pulled taut, the comforters tucked over, and Lian's array of stuffed animals rests in a designated corner of the room.

 _You'll have to go out there at some point,_ his voice echoes, and although her husband never said the words, the look in his eyes was enough to convey them. Jade looks to the open door with apprehension, wary of the possibility that she might run into someone not even a foot out of the room.

The immediate vicinity is quiet, however, and in a way that mildly raises concern. There are five people in the house now, including her ever curious (and vocal about it) daughter, and the dog, while lazy, can't be bothered to contain his snores.

["I'm seven months pregnant, Gingerbread Man," she hisses, tight-lipped. "Do you really think I have the time to be losing sleep because your anniversary gift can't keep its mouth shut?"

A smile slips onto the speedster's face, and he visibly stifles a chuckle before it can land him in dangerous territory. "Sorry, sis," Wally answers genuinely. "I'll keep him in our room instead."

Jade blinks in surprise at the affectionate term, so caught off guard that her attention hardly lingers on the words that come after. Admittedly, she's dropped in for visits at the condo often enough for there to be some sort of relationship there between her and her sister's boyfriend. He's teased her sometimes with a watermelon stuffed under his shirt, and she can't remember a time when he turned her away from his doorstep.

But the nickname still comes as a surprise, more endearing than anything even Roy has had to offer in the past few years. A soft blush colors her cheeks and, coming into the realization of just how flustered she is by it, she turns on her heel before barking, "Call me that again and I'll knee you in the balls!"

"Trust me, _sis,_ " Wally laughs, "I'll be gone before you even try!"]

The goddamned pit bull has fallen totally silent, as has everyone else for some odd reason, and eventually it's her increasing annoyance at the dead quiet that pulls Jade out of the room more than anything. The hallway and living room she finds empty, but as she nears the front door, a familiar and high-pitched voice draws her attention to the kitchen.

Jade almost smiles at the sound; her daughter is a stranger to the concept of silence, and she somehow manages to complicate even the easiest game of hide and seek by simply sitting out in the open, giggling. One of Jade's favorite pastimes has become watching the sulky look on her husband's face as he hands off their daughter to her, usually after failed attempts to invest her in the game.

This isn't to say that Lian isn't smart—she's incredibly resourceful and astute when she wants to be, or, in other words, when her mother is there to see it.

Jade only feels a little bad for Roy and how he hasn't realized that the phenomenon doesn't mean their daughter adores him any less. The fact of the matter is simply that she gravitates towards him when seeking comfort as opposed to applause, and he ought to understand that, in a way, that's much better than what he thinks he wants.

As Jade rounds the corner, the thought doesn't hit her until too late that Lian is the only one talking of the ensemble gathered in the kitchen. Her gaze travels to her white knuckled husband (most likely also drowning in anxiety) first, then to her mother, who catches her eye and sends a silent warning that Jade throws off instantly.

She finds Artemis and Lian in the center, standing before the fridge while the latter paws at one of a cluster of photographs, apparently the one with Wally, as her daughter incessantly repeats a drawn-out version of the dead man's name.

Jade's eyes zero in on just her sister, and she watches for a moment. If it weren't for the years they grew up with each other—without Mom—she wouldn't be able to see the grief that threatens to burst from Artemis's tightly sewn seams. Both of the sisters have had plenty of time to learn how to control grief and not let it be the other way around, and Jade likes to think that she had a part in helping hone her younger sister's skills.

It's a shame that those skills aren't being called into practice, though. Jade curls her lip and mentally debates whether she ought to step in, memory returning to the look that Paula flashed her when she entered the room. There isn't much that Roy can do to combat her, now that she has a year or so's worth of grief to hold over him, but her mother is definitely a different story.

Jade can't even remember how long the two of them have collectively lived under the same roof; she was four, maybe five years old when she saw handcuffs locked into place around her mother's wrists. Her father became the sole parental unit she knew for nearly every year after that, and even when things seemed to simmer down once Artemis established her place as a white sheep within the traditional family hierarchy, it didn't do much more than instill diplomatic silence between Jade and Paula as opposed to outright screaming.

Jade knows it can't be boiled down to something so simple, but the thought rests in the back of her mind nonetheless: that they're all here because of Paula, because of what she could and couldn't do.

"Hey," she hears herself say, "snap out of it."

["There's only two ways a person can go, Artemis." Jade hovers over her bed, eyes narrowed at the crumpled mess that lies under two layers of scrunched up blankets. Wally is outside of the room, but he stands at the doorway, waiting perhaps for the right moment to walk in before things can get worse.

"A) they leave you, B) they die. It doesn't take a lot of brain power to decide which way is better, so you'd best get it through your skull"—his hands are on her shoulders, but she jerks away, infuriated, voice rising a notch—"that your friend got the better luck of the draw before I go in there and drag you out of your own misery myself!"]

Lian recognizes her mother's voice instantly, and she turns to her with newfound interest, arms outstretched. Killer tension and sour circumstances aside, Jade can't help but smile at the thought that she's instantly wanted. She uncrosses her arms and walks into the kitchen, unfazed by the looks on her family's faces around her. Artemis doesn't say so much as a word when she takes Lian from her arms, although the nature of the usual spark in her eyes has changed, even if just slightly.

"Jade," says Roy, even and measured. He's stepped away from his corner of the kitchen to place a warning hand on her arm, and his eyes keep darting to Artemis's face in a mixture of apprehension and concern.

If Jade said she didn't feel insulted, she would be lying. Everything about how the awkward silence on his end for the past few months sits in stark contrast to this open show of concern for someone else simply infuriates her, and something in her snaps the minute his fingers brush against her skin. He pulls back in surprise at the absolutely vile look she sends his way, and before anyone can say anything else, Jade is marching out of the room, an oblivious Lian in tow.

It's true, she'll admit, that her husband has been immensely cooperative since that night she waltzed into his apartment with their daughter nestled on her back. He's made every effort to be the father that Lian deserves but didn't have for more than a year, and, loathe though she is to admit it, Jade was never more relieved than when he suggested they move in with her mother, what with the work and the baby and everything else.

None of this means that he's forgotten how to put up walls, though. If Roy has sided with her on every logical and public front, then he's also refused to make so much as a stance on the personal and private one.

And Jade has always been a hard equation to solve, she knows that; her emotions are a melting pot of grief and anger and confusion all wrapped into one, courtesy of her father.

But Roy broke past those barriers once—fit his fingers to her skin and whispered her name, laughed in the hollow of her neck when she said his back. It felt nice to have someone fight for her, finally, to know that she was worth the fight at all.

["I love her, you know. More than anything."]

This mess that they're in right now is a fight for their lives; a figurative one, but real, nonetheless. Jade's made it a point to put it all out on the table: the ugly truth and the anger that comes with it, but also the burning desire to fight for it to be theirs, and no one else's, to control.

Roy doesn't even know that the table's there, and for once, just once—

—she thinks she might be scared.


End file.
